songblog

Clarinet lesson #14 - das gut!

This is the first lesson where I had the advantage of having my new recorder to capture the whole thing so I don't have to try and remember or write things down. I have to say, its the greatest thing ever for lessons, and I will now be able to illustrate the concepts by small audio excerpts, and what could be clearer than that? Its quite simple to export the files, and normalize and amplify if necessary using Audactiy or whatever audio editor you have at hand, and it sounds perfectly clear.
I started the lesson by getting something clear that I misunderstood: while the force of the air is fairly constant, and the embrosure is set, the tongue is by no means static in the mouth. As Kirt says, what we need to do is for every note to line up with the acoustics of the instrument for that particular note. So its breath, seperate from fingering, seperate from the subtle variations of the cavity of the mouth to make the pure tone (or I sould say whatever tone) you are after for that particular note.
Therefore, all things being equal, if you play a note that doesn't sound right, its not the horn but the fact that we are not lined up with the horn correctly for that note. So its not blow less, blow more but it means get more purity. Remember to always get set first, take your time and don't rush it before you start the note.
We were playing the simple F scale from last week, which is perfect for getting tones one, especially since it doesn't go over the break. We spoke again about the thumb on the register key, and how yoiu only just need the tip of the thumb on the key,and never sliding up and down the key. I have a tendency to do this with Bb to F.
We also played the scale by doing a 16 count of the first note, up or down, and getting that right. Everything proceedes from this first correct note and it must be steady and consistent throughout. Then go on with the scale. Kirt again stressed, have the gut ready for anything , as if some one was about to punch you. Recall that as you play higher in the scale, you must push harder, not blow harder, just to keep the tones pure and steady at the same volume. Higher notes, especially to high and soft, you really have to push hard. Counter intuitive, but there it is, all the side effect of the physics of air movement, what mechanics call the venturi effect: as the size of the tube gets smaller, with the same amount of push of air, the velocity increases in proportion to the size of the tube.
Also with the higher pitches, the tongue moves upward in the mouth, just slightly, which gives you the venturi effect - again, this is for pure tones, and of course you will vary to suit what you are after, but you should be able to make that pure tone. The column of air is on or off, constant, but the chamber in the mouth is altered to fit the physical requirements of the particular note.

Kirt wrote in response to this:

This is a good description, but it could be inferred that the tongue
shaping for higher notes is _only_ for pure tone, and that it varies
depending on the tone _or style_ one prefers. This tongue movement is
actually an example of "lining up with the acoustics" of the horn.
Higher notes = shorter tube, therefore a smaller air passage is needed.
Think how differently you approach a low Bb on tenor sax with a palm key
F. The Bb is created in the biggest part of the horn (and longest), and
the F is created at the smallest part of the horn (and shortest).
You'll be much more open for the low note, much more closed for the high
note.

If one's favorite clarinet music is Greek/Turkish, they still should be
able to play with a classical tone if they have the acoustical
fundamentals down pat.

The main thing from this lesson, a breakthru, was this: I have been taking a deep breath, then settting the muscles of my gut, then my embrosure and then playing. Kirt had me do something just slightly different: set the gut first, then take a deep breath. The difference is tremendous, and its hard to imagine that such a small change could make such a vast improvement.
Now when I am breathing, thats all I have to think about, and its easy enough to always have the gut muscles set if you simply think about it. Now I am beginning to understand the whole notion of a settled column of air.
One thing I noticed for the first time, were the muscles on the side of my mouth - not that they hurt, but I could feel them as seperate from the rest of the muscles - strange and interesting.
Many players I understand, simply bring the horn up, breath, and make your embrosure at the exact same time - a recipe for disaster. But if you have your abdominal muscles set, you can play the same passages with a fraction of the amount of air.
Here is a short example of a pretty good scale using this technique:
Download file
To move on a bit on the left hand thumb: I have the tendency to move the thumb around way too much, and sliding up and down on the horn, especially when going down to the Bb from a B. The anchor is the middle F but there should be a minium amount of movement. Hard to do, but again the least amount of movement you can get away with the better. The index finger should always remain aiimed at the hole, even when rocking up to play the A.
You must make certain that the index finger moves independently of the other three fingers as it rocks from the A key to the Ab. And as Kirt reminded me, all fingers move indendently of the others. Sheesh! The curve of the index finger should never deviate from the curve you make when fingering a B above the break (which is referred to as good finger postion) - again, always curved, and the finger curves around the A and the Ab key as I spoke about last week. Really really tough for me, since I am not familar with this motion, tiny as it is. Rock, don't pivot the index finger, and there is no time that you ever straighten your index finger - or at least, that is what is supposed to happen. Try this with B - Bb - A - Ab. The wrist will move during this rocking, unlike most of the other times you are playing, so you can get it to rock and not pivot. I have been assured that once I get this technique, it will be easier, not harder to play. Here are a few exercises that Kirt gave me specifically for this:

Note: I should have said this exercise was played as a slur, not legato as the graphic indicates.
You can also try holding down the pinky - which must be straight - when doing this. On the last one, you can hold down the Ab as you finger C - this will not make a good note, its only the exercise the fingers. One last exercise is to finger the C and just lift up enough to lift the rings, but the fingers are still on the rings. Certainly this is only on Boehm. Now hold down the Ab key while you do this, and again not blowing just exercising the hand, and remember to hold down the B key.

All in all, my best lesson yet. I may end up actually learning how to play this thing!

Clarinet lesson #13

Unlike my poor start last week, today I sat down once I got to Kirts and just played some long tones, and thought about what I was playing, even when I was simply trying to warm up. There is no time when slacking moves you forward.
Before we did any playing at all, Kirt had me stand up, bend from the waist and breathe deeply, just as you breathe deeply before you play. We repeated this exercise at a couple of different angles, each time making certain to keep all the air coming up from the lungs, not trying to fill the upper lungs at all and most important, keeping the shoulders loose and relaxed. If your shoulders tense up when you are playing, it will affect all your playing, and will start to make your breath fill up the upper part of your lungs. When this happens, you have pretty much lost it, since you are no longer controlling the air as you should from your gut.
To catch up, this past week I have been playing looking at myself in the mirror almost all the time, the better to watch my finger position, and its paying off. There are really so many things going on with this technique, its hard to keep them all under control. Some of the things that Kirt pointed out were the angle of my left hand and how that interacts with the pinky.
Kirt had mentioned but was more assertive this time in telling me to keep the pinky straight, so that it hits flat on the key, not curved. Even if the hand is fairly tight and collapsed toward the body of the horn, if the bottom of the wrist is not twisted up slightly, you will have difficulty in getting the hand and the pinky to lie in the correct manor. Please see the photo from the last lesson on this. Also, having the slip of paper between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand really helps here.
One other thing that I have been concentrating on is to make a concious effort to make certain that I am not changing my breath as I play notes. As Kirt has explained, think of it like a totally solid, unchanging column of air that is constant, with only your fingers moving. Again, once you start the air moving, don't change the velocity or postition at all. He wasn't specific about it, but I suspect this is like the guitar for instance - you have to be able to play the notes exactly the same wherever they are on the neck, with the same tone and volume. That is how you get control on the guitar. I am not saying that you would never be totally unchanging in your breath, since you have to do bends and so forth, but the control is they key. You can't play whatever comes into your mind if you cannot produce a clear, clean tone at any volume at any time,
Consider the following simple exercise:

play this set as one continuous legato line, and once you have your tone, don't vary your embrosure at all for any reason. You may find that you have some issues going from the low E to the C, but if these are only from slight misplacments when you hit the register key, you can overcome that. The real trick is to stay focused on that one great tone, and just let the fingers do what they do, independent of the mouth.
One other thing to note is that the thumb doesn't contact the register key in line with the body of the clarinet but at a 45 degree angle, and the thumb just moves ever so slightly when uncovering the hole and hitting the register key.
Once we got thru breathing (sounds ominous, doesn't it?), Kirt told me the next step was to start doing some stacatto practice. We had done this once before, some time back, but really I have only been practicing legato now for some time.
As a reminder, Kirt made me do the whole process of setting myself to play correctly: 1) get the embrosure set on the horn - bottom lip stretched, corners of the mouth in, chin flat. 2) slide the chin straight down contacting the reed as far as you can 3) chew in an upward direction until you are at the correct spot to start the note.
Certainly I don't go to this extent with each breath, but certainly to be reminded of it is a good thing, and the results were immediate, the notes simply sounded better.
Now for the first stacatto: once you are ready to play, close the reed with the tounge and blow as hard as possible, then open just the merest fraction to let a sound out and immediately close the opening. This is the "dut" sound (detached) and its not suppose to be pretty, we are simply trying to make the perfect staccato here. Do this until your run out of breath, and then several more times.
Legato: this is with the sound of "daw" (connected, smooth) and you are trying to make this as smooth as possible. Don't rush this, and your tounge should make the minimum amount of contact possible, light as an angles kiss you know? Here is where having the embrosure fixed solidly, especially not moving the chin, is all important.
Final stacatto: this again is the "duh" sound, but unlike the first stacatto, you are not trying to blow your brains out, but are trying with minimum movement to make a succient, precise stacatto. Don't rush this, make them slow quarter notes and accurate, accurate, accurate.
Since I am working at going over the break, we did some work going up from A to B, with variations as you saw from the last lesson, and here again is where Kirt was telling me to pay particular attention to my left pinky. If you have the hand in the correct position, with the bottom side of the wrist up slightly, the hand can just rock back and forth in a very tiny movement to move the keys and go over the break. I did A to B many times, and too quickly too, since doing it too fast ruined my left hand position. Its not a race, you don't get to play accurately at speed if you can't play accurately slowly. And again the pinky is flat and slaps the key.You can also rest the pinky against the key as an anchor to keep your hand in the correct position. We worked on this for some time.
Finally, I got some new exercises, the basic scales with a very slight twist as the first note of each octave is held for a quarter note instead of an eighth, on the ascending notes only and then on the decent you end up first note of the relative minor. Download file
We are not about to tear through all these, I am only doing the C and A minor for this next week.
So - get your hands in the right postition before you start to play, and keep them relaxed as you play, because like everything else here in this life, stress is your enemy.

Clarinet lesson #12 - its all in the wrist

Behold, the largest shot of my hands you will ever see. I even reduced the image but there it is. So lets continue to the lesson.

I hadn't seen Kirt in over a month due to scheduling conflicts, so I was a bit anixous and instead of taking the time to sit and play some long tones, I just started tootling around. Thats fine when I am on my own, but its not the way to start a lesson really, unless that is I am playing well to begin with. Oh well......
Once we settled down, Kirt honed on my hand position, or rather what I wasn't doing correctly, even though he has told me many times what to do.
Look at the photo carefully: the left hand (the hand sinister as they used to say in the middle ages, and quite applicaple for the clarinet) has the correct postion. Note in particular how the left wrist is dropped which collapses the hand, reducing the amount of distance you have to cover when you are moving your fingers. This is vitally important, and one of the things that is hardest to make a habit, even Kirt had difficultly with this one. For me, its a holdover from so many years of sax playing where both of your hand and fingers are basically perpendicular to the floor. Great for sax, bad for clarinet and a dead giveaway when you see a doubler.
Also note on both hands, the first three fingers are curved, not flat; the pinkies, which slap the keys, are flat although there is a slight curve on the left pinky, something to watch. The pinkies of both hands are on their respective anchor keys. I find this a great way to make sure that I am in close contact with the horn.
On the left hand again see how my first finger is resting on the A and Ab keys - makes for quick work when playing these notes, and recall that if you hit the A key, you are already lifting the Ab so no worries there.
Finally, again I emphasize that both hands are facing upward on a rough 45 degree angle, and the fingers, even fat fingers like mine, don't ever touch each other.
Back to the right hand, note how my first finger is resting on the side keys - this is the other anchor point for the right hand, and in my case the crease of my finger is resting right over the upper of the two lower keys. For you of course it may well be a bit different. As it turns out, Kirts hands and mine are almost identical in size, so I can't ever make the case that he can do things on the horn I can't due to some different in finger lenght, etc. Bummer! Again, resting your hand on the right anchor makes it much closer to the horn, a good thing in all ways.
One other thing Kirt pointed out to me is that when I look at my right hand, I could see the impressions of the rings on my fingertips, which means I was pressing far too hard with my fingers. As he says, it should be a caress, not a death grip. Easy to say when you know how to do it, hard when you are still learing and are in fear of the dreaded squeaks.
As I say, we spent most of the lesson going over this, and as a result I can't move on yet to new exercises or other things. Kirt is a task master, but he is correct, there is no point moving on until I can make these finger positions a habit, and I can tell you when I do have my hands correct, it makes everything much easier.
Until the next lesson I will continue to concentrate on the hand postion, since by now - trust me on this! - i have memorized all the exercises.
So - have you practiced in front of a mirror lately? You may want to consider it.......